Vinyan (2008)

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I had low expectations for this movie but was very pleasantly surprised. The slow pace of the storyline allows a gradual build-up of the atmosphere, which kept me interested to the end. This is helped by great set of locations (derelict villages and temples, rotting jungles...) that are masterfully depicted - both vividly and with a dreamlike quality that increases as the movie progresses. The actors are good (Petch Osathanugrah is particularly creepy) but do not overplay their roles, contributing to the dreamlike sensation. As the end draws near, the boundaries of reality, imagination and symbolism dissolve...Most of the negative reviews here seem to come from people expecting a horror/gore movie or comparing Vinyan to Lynch's work. While there are graphic aspects to the movie, very creepy characters and an ending open to interpretation, these comparisons are inadequate. Forget about them and watch Vinyan with an open mind - you might not like it (it is one of its kind and not for everyone) but you won't regret having watched it.

Well, yeah. That says it.From the description I expected something along the lines of Children of the Corn, but in reality the scary feral children have very little to do with this movie, they just kinda show up at the end to rub mud on a naked woman's body.Most of the movie is about the mundane, anti-climatic journey to the home of these not so scary feral children(who we only get to see briefly) so a crazy wife can have them rub mud on her naked body.You see, a rich couple's son died not so long ago. The mom is obviously not coping well and going nuts as a result. But she convinces her husband to pack a bag with hundreds of millions of dollars so they can pay Asian gangsters and human traffickers to lead them to some forbidden Burmese district, just to make sure their son isn't alive. So for the first hour and 10 minutes people argue, there's lots of rain, someone gets shot, and there's a sex scene. 15 minutes before the closing credits, feral children show up acting kind of creepy, the husband gets killed, and yes I'll say it again... the children rub mud on the wife's naked body. And that's the end.

Straight away I must say I agree with most comments in the "I hated this movie" category. However, I am writing this review to point out what I think might have been some redeeming features of it until they were totally spoiled by the fantasy elements and the ridiculous ending.Both my wife and myself were first attracted to it as it was classed as a drama on its TV showing (totally wrong, it should have been a fantasy/horror - there were certainly no thrills in it for us, we do sometimes quite like a good thriller - and then we wouldn't have bothered at all). We also thought the plot sounded plausible - a wealthy western couple losing their son in a tsunami, and then the seriously disturbed mother persuading dad to go with her look for him.On watching the film, we thought it went well along these lines, with the boy apparently being spotted on a video of children playing on a river bank, with one of them wearing a red shirt - possible the Manchester United shirt their son was wearing when he was washed away. This video was seen in a screening amongst wealthy patrons of charities organizing relief for the tsunami victims, also very plausible.So off they go, with some very good shots of the scenery and local means of transport, etc. Unfortunately much of it was at night-time, so we saw little of it. Why do film makers do this, or is it the reproduction on a TV screen? Anyway, that was the first put-off for us. Another put-off was the interminable length of many scenes, where nothing else happened (e.g. when the husband rescues his wife from the sea and they were splashing around in the water for far too long) and we were trying to be patient whilst waiting for the scene to change.As events unfolded, and I will not say more to avoid further possible spoilers, the only other redeeming quality for us was the chance that they might find their son, and we watched it through to the end with this hope in mind.I must add one major criticism of the use of the children in the film, on top of everything that has been said in other reviews. Were the film- makers trying to emulate "Lord of the Flies"? I can understand how boys of rich parents in an English prep school can turn into little savages, but the local children in such a disaster, having lost their parents, would not gang up in the forest like this. I think it was very degrading of the people who live in these areas to suggest they would.Googling child abandonment in Burma does not change my view of this film. This child abandonment is due entirely to the military, of which there is no mention. If there had been, and cut out the fantasy, then it would have been far more successful as a drama, albeit fictional.

I really wanted to like this movie. I enjoyed that it had an uncommon premise and that it wasn't just some mainstream Hollywood hogwash. Unfortunately, it was awful. The movie dragged, there was nmo hint of suspense, the dialogue was dry and there wasn't really anything eventful until the last 20 minutes of so. The woman was incredibly irritating; I found myself annoyed with the husband for putting up with her antics and her crazy claims. After a while I found myself watching just in vain hope to see the woman get locked up in a psych ward or get eaten by an animal to make this irritating waste of time movie worthwhile. Save yourself the time, that could better (and more entertainingly) be spent brushing your teeth, counting the cracks in the sidewalk and so forth! <3